We always do when we need anything
awfully. Look at the bathtub! Good-night! I'm goin' to earn one myself!"
declared Bob.

"Mrs. Crosby's gotta get a new one. P'raps she'll sell us her old one
cheap."

That was the way the music idea started, and nothing else was talked of
at the table for days but how to get a piano. Then one day Emily came
rushing home from school all out of breath, her eyes as bright as stars,
and her cheeks like roses. "Mrs. Barlow came to our school to-day and
talked to the teacher, and I heard her say she was going away for the
winter. She's going to store her goods in the Service Company barn, but
she wants to get somebody to take care of her piano. I stepped right up
and told her my mother was looking for a piano, and we'd be real careful
of it, and she's just delighted; and--it's coming to-morrow morning at
nine o'clock! The man's going to bring it!"

She gasped it out so incoherently that they had to make her tell it over
twice to get any sense out of it; but when Bob finally understood he
caught his little sister in his arms and hugged her with a big smacking
kiss:

"You sure are a little peach, Em'ly!" he shouted. "You're a pippin of
the pippins! I didn't know you had that much nerve, you kid, you! I sure
am proud of you! My! Think of havin' a pianna! Say, Betty, I can play
the base of chopsticks now!"

The next evening when Betty got home from the Hathaways there was the
piano standing in the big space opposite the windows in the dining-room.
Ma had elected to have it there rather than in the front room, because
it might often be too cold in the front room for the children to
practice, and besides it wouldn't be good for the piano. So the piano
became a beloved member of the family, and Betty began to give
instructions in music, wondering at herself that she knew how, for her
own music had been most desultory, and nobody had ever cared whether she
practiced or not. She had been allowed to ramble among the great masters
for the most part unconducted, with the meagerest technique, and her own
interpretation. She could read well and her sense of time and rhythm
were natural, else she would have made worse work of it than she did.
But she forthwith set herself to practicing, realizing that it might yet
stand her in good stead since she had to earn her living.

Little Emily and Bob stood one on either side and watched her as she
played, with wondering admiration, and when Betty went to h